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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1720 ..
MR MOORE (continuing):
the motion divided into parts so that I can support the other parts of the motion. If it is not divided I will not be able to support the motion because I have not read the Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation.
Mr KAINE (8.00): I will not be supporting Mr Rugendyke's amendment. No matter how the motion is amended I would still vote against paragraph (1) of this proposition anyway because I do not support the notion of the federal government intervening at will into the affairs of this territory. I do not agree with it interfering in the affairs of any of the states either under the guise of exercising the foreign power, and all of the other guises under which federal intervention takes place. I do not make an exception in this instance because it suits certain people in this place to try to make a political point. So, regardless of whether Mr Rugendyke's amendment gets up or not, I will not be supporting this motion, any part of it.
I will support Mr Moore's proposition that it should be dealt with seriatim because at least then I may be able to support one or more parts of it, but I certainly will not support it in its present form, whether amended or not in accordance with Mr Rugendyke's amendment.
MR HARGREAVES (8.01): Like Mr Stanhope, I recognise where Mr Rugendyke has come from in proposing this amendment and I fully understand it. I would just make a couple of other points though. One is that there is a disproportionate number of Aboriginal people in our jails. A lot of them are there because of the impact of mandatory sentencing, and a lot of them are very young adults. What we are actually doing is drawing a line, an arbitrary line, between an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old, saying that this should not happen.
From the work we have done on the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, I am particularly conscious of the number of young men who have committed suicide in jail, and I suspect that it was directly attributable to the mandatory sentencing regimes. I have no difficulty with a person paying for a crime that they have committed if the justice that is dished out meets the crime that they committed; but I know in my heart that that is not so with a lot of young men and young women. We saw a rise in Queensland in the number of young women going to jail.
While ever we have this disproportionate number of Aboriginal people in our jails we have an attitudinal problem in this country. We have an abrogation of responsibility in this country. We almost have a racist approach to this in this country, and I think we should be making a statement loud and clear that we are not prepared to take that; that in fact we do not make a distinction between a young Aboriginal person of 16 years and a young Aboriginal of 18 years. I think it is sad that we would.
As I said before, Mr Speaker, I understand fully where Mr Rugendyke is coming from and I support what he is trying to do, but I just think we cannot make that distinction.
MR OSBORNE
(8.03): I always find these types of debates interesting because at least the government is consistent on this issue. I remember a couple of years ago members of the Labor Party marching arm in arm on Parliament House with other leaders around the country when the federal government was going to overturn euthanasia. I find it
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